


That Was How

by Hoodoo



Series: The Bar at the End of the Universe [17]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Adventures, Backstory, Bar, F/M, Feelings Realization, First Meetings, Gen, Minor Angst, New Beginnings, Not Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 18:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17371112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoodoo/pseuds/Hoodoo
Summary: The Barkeep has met a lot of Ricks. How did she get to where she was? Why is she so obsessed with them? Rick c-137 holds the key.





	That Was How

**Author's Note:**

> This request was received:  
>  _hello would a story about the bartender meeting the original c-137 rick be ok? Because i’m curious as to how she knew about him and the mind erasing so maybe some backstory?_
> 
> Anon, I hope you’re still around. I enjoyed writing some backstory very much, and it ties in to some information in an older story called [What Evil Lurks in the Heart of Rick](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12885510/chapters/29436045).

You’d been working in this dive bar for a while now. Nothing fancy, nothing hip; just pulling taps and serving the occasional mixed drink if a tourist accidently wandered in. It was dark and smelled of old cigarettes from the time before smoking wasn’t allowed in public places. You were mostly content.

There were regulars who you knew by name. You liked your job, but some times, you got an itch to do something. Be something more. Your options were limited, however, so you didn’t. 

“Hey. I think that guy’s pukin’ in the restroom,” Rob, one of the regulars who shuffled in after his shift so he didn’t have to go home and deal with his family, announced unnecessarily. 

You had heard, and the retching from the restroom seemed amplified. 

You groaned. 

“I’ll give you a free beer to check on him,” you offered hopefully. 

“You know you ain’t allowed to give out free beers!”

Frowning, you had to nod. The owner of the place had threatened to terminate you when he found out you’d occasionally given away product to the people who spent a lot of their time here. “They’ll pay for it,” he’d yelled. “Don’t give it away!”

Rob smiled drunkenly at you. “If you pay for another pint, I’ll go . . .”

Your salary didn’t allow you to be that altruistic.

“Never mind,” you sighed, wiping your hands on one of the towels under the bar. “I’ll go see how he is.”

Rob waved at you as you left your workspace. Walking to the establishment’s only restroom, the retching hadn’t stopped. You knocked on the door, lightly. 

“Hey. Hey. You okay in there?” you asked with your head near the crack between door and doorframe.

Your answer was another bout of retching and the unmistakable sound of liquids hitting the water in the toilet.

“At least he’s not pukin’ on the floor!” Rob called to you gleefully.

Thank heaven for small favors, you guessed. Out loud, you said, “You need help?”

There was a groan in response.

Steeling yourself, you grabbed the doorknob and found it wasn’t locked. Although you half-hoped it would be so maybe the guy inside would have the chance to right himself, at least you wouldn’t have to get out the toolkit and unscrew it to get in. You weren’t incredibly happy about barging in on a vomiting man--that was nowhere in your job description!--but having someone pass out and choke on their own puke wouldn’t be a great alternative either. 

“I’m coming in,” you announced.

You followed through, and found the old lanky guy who’d stumbled into the bar earlier hugging the toilet. He’d filled the bowl with pure bile-colored liquid; in your experience you knew that meant he’d been taking in only alcohol for a while, with no food in his stomach to help absorb it. 

He looked haggard and pale; his eyes bloodshot and sunken. He had strings of yellow drool dangling from his lower lip. When he picked his head up to look at you, he wiped the back of his forearm and hand across his chin, and managed to smear some of the drool into his hair. Before you could move further into the room, he lifted himself upward enough to vomit into the toilet bowl once more.

When he sat back down on the floor with a groan, some of his color had returned.

“Gotta purge that swill they call Plutonian vodka,” he croaked, as he gave you a weak smile and a wink.

That was how you met Rick Sanchez. 

⁂

You’d helped him clean up a little after his little evacuation in the bar’s toilet by offering him actual cloth towels instead of the cheap paper ones available that disintegrated on contact with water. He wiped his face; you swallowed your gorge and wiped his hair. Then you held his arm to assist him back to a bar stool and gave him a glass of water.

He scowled at that and requested a shot of vodka, neat. 

“N-n-none of that Plutonian shit!” he’d demanded, as if you acted like you even knew what the hell he was talking about.

Gently you nudged the glass of water closer to him. He stared you down; you stared back, and he finally took it, although he coughed through the first few swallows. Then he asked again for that shot of vodka, pretty please. 

Rob looked like he was going to say something. Come to your defense, maybe? Recommend the guy get the hell out? Call the cops? But at the first syllable that tried to come of out his mouth, the old guy whipped around and scowled so hard at him Rob choked off whatever he had thought to say. You saw the new guy’s free arm tense, a little, and Rob glance down.

Your regular customer gulped and in a rush of movement, he pushed away from the bar and stammered he had to get home. He threw a handful of bills on the bar and was gone before you knew it. 

The new guy watched him go with narrowed eyes. You had no idea what just happened or what Rob may have seen out of your line of sight on the other side of the bar. Once Rob was gone for good, he turned back to you with a wide smile. 

“What’d’ya say, baby? Set me up a drink and I’ll buy you one too.”

You find this guy in the bathroom, puking his guts out, wipe vomit out of his hair; he does something to intimidate a regular patron of this place; and now he wants to buy you a drink? What was next, him crashing on your couch?

Yes. That’s exactly what happened next. 

You took him up on his offer to have a single drink with him. He launched into a wild story about his life. None of it made much sense, but he didn’t seem the kind of crazy that was going to end up stabbing you; he seemed the kind of crazy that was full of fun and adventure. He had to be an author. No other person could com up with the outrageous stories he told you. 

When he mentioned that he’d been drifting from place to place recently and was looking for somewhere to crash for the night, you did suggest your couch. With a smug grin like he’d been waiting for you to offer, he took you up on it.

That was how Rick Sanchez came into your life.

⁂

He wandered in and out of your life randomly. He’d show up at the bar. Occasionally you found him snoring on your couch when you came home. There was never any rhyme or reason to when he would arrive, and he sometimes just disappeared again without explanation either. 

Once, when you pinned him down enough to at least have breakfast with you, you mentioned you’d love to read one of his books sometime.

“Books?” he replied, completely baffled. 

“Yeah. Can you give me a title or two?”

With his forkful of pancakes halfway to his mouth, he frowned. “I don’t know what the-what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Your books!” you said in exasperation, as if repeating it was going to make it clear. “All these stories you’re telling me? About different planets and different booze and the interdimensional travel--you have the whole world-building down to an art! Is it like a series or are there standalone novels? Tell me where to start, I can’t wait to read them!”

Rick set his food back onto his plate in a deliberate motion. 

“You think that I-I-I am making up everything I’m telling you?” he said in a low, even voice. 

You’d never seen him so serious, but you laughed anyway. “Yes! Of course!”

He scowled. 

“You’re an idiot,” he announced, and reaching over the table, he grabbed your wrist and dragged you to your feet. 

As you cried out in scared protest, Rick pulled a device from the inside of his lab coat and from it, produced a swirling green and yellow circle of opaque light. Ignoring your fright and confusion, he pulled you through it into another world. 

That was how your adventures with Rick Sanchez started. 

⁂

His visits were still erratic, but when he did deign to take you with him, he showed you things you couldn’t have imagined. Rick was your guide from one end of the galaxy to the next; he escorted you into new dimensions filled with wonder and horror. You visited with unique people living nothing like you’d ever seen. You saw worlds that were nothing like anything on Earth. 

You drank with Rick at a hundred different alien bars. You accompanied him to places he had to do ‘business’. Although full of contempt that you were such a tourist and a rube, he introduced you to so much more than your entire life could have been. 

You discovered that your life was not even a speck of dust in the scheme of the universe, but instead of being crushed by the knowledge, you only wanted to learn and see more.

You’d become conditioned to get excited at the sound of a portal. You looked forward to seeing his unruly blue hair and boney build. You imagined what it would be like to hug him. You had dreams about what it would be like to be naked with him, in your bed.  
That was how you fell in love with Rick Sanchez. 

⁂

When you realized that you had deeper feelings for him, you were giddy and nervous and moonstruck. You’d never imagined yourself with an older man; you’d never imagined yourself meeting someone in such a random way who would mean so much to you. 

You were just being silly, weren’t you? You couldn’t have fallen in love with this guy who just showed up out of nowhere. Right? It was just the thrill of going on adventures. It was just the idea that he singled you out. Right?! There was no way you were thinking about a serious relationship with him!

The two of you hadn’t slept together. You hadn’t even shared a bed; every time he crashed at your place he passed out on your couch! You’d never had a kiss, never had any intimate touching unless you counted when you held his elbow to help him out of the restroom at the bar. Rick had never brought up anything of the sort; in fact he scoffed and derided any couple you happened to see on your travels. You’d heard his rant about ‘relationships’ and ‘biological need to breed’ more than once. 

But you couldn’t deny that you got a thrill in your stomach whenever he showed up. You knew you were flushed around him, you could feel the heat in your cheeks and your palms felt damp. Sometimes it was hard to hear what he was saying over your pulse pounding in your ears, and the times you were close enough to smell him, it was intoxicating. 

You knew he wasn’t celibate. You _hoped_ he wasn’t celibate! Firmly you told yourself the next time he showed up, wanting a place to sleep for the night, you were going to take him to bed. You were going to show him what you thought of him. You were going to give him the best sex of his life!

When he did arrive--unannounced, as usual--at your small apartment two weeks later, he was harried. He was preoccupied and anxious. None of those three things were anything you’d associate with Rick. 

Still, you gave him the drink he asked for and, steeling yourself, you told him you wanted to talk to him about something important. 

He downed the tumbler of vodka you’d handed him, belched, and took your hand. 

“No-no, I’ve got to, I’ve got to--there’s something I have t-to tell you first, baby,” he said.

His touch made butterflies float in your stomach; his words tied them up in knots. 

“This is impor-important,” he insisted. “I should’ve told you this a long time ago.”

Your breath caught in your throat. You were glad you opted for a matching, lacy bra and panty set today, because you couldn’t wait for Rick to see you in them, and then for his large hands to strip them from you. 

“I’m in big trouble,” Rick continued feverishly, “and I think you are too.”

With no further explanation, he opened a portal and took you someplace new. 

It was an apartment. It was only slightly bigger than the one you’d left, and maybe slightly nicer. You looked around, wondering if this was his place finally. 

“I hope this is okay. I think it’ll be okay,” he said. 

“What?”

Rick waved off your question. “I’ve paid for it, but there’s a monthly fee, like a home owner’s fee you’ll have to cover. There’s amenities like a pool and shit on the first floor, and a grocer’s and stuff nearby. It’ll be perfect for you.”

“Rick, what are you talking about?”

“I got you some clothes and stuff too. In the cl-closet. And extra towels and sheets. I know you like the heavy sheets with the high thread count. I snooped around your place. I know how creepy that sounds.”

None of this made any sense, and your arousal was starting to sour to fear. “Rick--?”

“Come on, I-I-I’ve got something else to show you.”

Before you could protest, he pulled your through another portal. 

You stepped out onto a rocky plateau. You could breathe, but the atmosphere was thin because the stars in the sky were crystal clear and it was almost too cold. There was no vegetation. Straining your eyes, you could see the edge of it as well. This wasn’t even a planetoid, this was a desolate chunk of rock drifting through space. 

You realized you could see your shadow blinking on and off from a yellow light behind you. Turning, you saw a single building with a flashing neon sign. The words were written in an alien language, but as you stared at them, they started to morph into something you could read. 

Before you could fully make them out, however, Rick took your shoulders and turned you to him. 

“I am so sorry, baby,” he said, and he sounded genuinely upset. “The Feds are after me. They got pretty fucking close this time--”

“The Feds?” you interrupted, your gaze inadvertently drawn back to the sign you could almost read now. 

“The Galactic Federation!” he said angrily, but that didn’t actually explain anything. “They’re hot on my goddamn tail, and I’m going to have to lay low to shake them off.”

His barely controlled panic finally, really, caught your attention. “What do you mean? What are you talking about, Rick?”

“I’m going to have to live with my family,” he replied, as if that made any sense either. “That’ll keep me safe. But I think you’ve been seen with me, so you may be under surveillance--you might be taken and questioned about me, and that-that . . . that just can’t happen. The apartment? It’s yours now. They don’t know about it. You should be safe there. And this place? It’s neutral. It’s outside the Federation. I put in a good word for you. I think you’ll like it.”

Unbidden, tears formed in your eyes. “Rick, I don’t understand what you’re saying!”

For the first time since you’d met him, Rick looked remorseful. “I’m sorry, baby.”

From his inside pocket, where he kept his portal gun, he extracted a new device. It was larger and unwieldy, and looked held together with zip ties and some duct tape. He pointed it at you, told you he was sorry again even as you begged him to give you real answers, even as you told him you didn’t care what kind of trouble he was in, you just wanted to be with him, that you thought you loved him, no, please, Rick, please--and you were blinded by a white light as he pulled the trigger.

The world went blank. 

When you were finally able to see again, an old man in a lab coat was standing over you, cursing at some unknown piece of equipment in his hand that was smoking and throwing sparks randomly.

“Fucking prototype!” he cursed. “Goddamn piece of shit, falling apart when the fucking trigger was pulled--”

You groaned. 

The sound you made drew his attention to you. 

“Oh, hey, you okay?” he asked. He sounded like he was feigning concern. “That was some tumble you took!”

He offered you a hand, which you accepted. A tiny thrill nestled in your belly as you stood, but you also felt dizzy. His hand was cool and dry, and even upright, he was much taller than you. His hair was wild spikes of blue, and he wiped a bit of drool off his lower lip. There was an itch in your brain, like some part of you recognized him.

“Do I know you?” you asked, puzzled. 

His eyes shifted away from you. “Uh, n-no. Nope! I just happened by when you fell. Here, this key fell out of your pocket. Looks like an apartment key? I had one like that once. The button on top gets you home.”

You accepted it. It did look like a key to a door, and you had to just nod about the button, because there didn’t seem to be any other way to get off this rock. 

“And, uh. You said you had an interview. At the Bar?” he continued, waving a hand at the building. 

You looked to where he indicated. “The Bar At The End of The Universe”, the yellow neon sign flashed on its roof. 

“Yeah, I guess,” you agreed slowly. You must have hit your head when you fell, because everything was a little blank, but that had to be right. Why else would you be here?

“Well, good luck!” he said, giving you a little push and a nod. A strained smile stretched his face.

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”

You started off towards the door. You had the unmistakable feeling that he was watching you go. When you turned around, you were right.

Still puzzled, you called, “Are you sure I don’t know you?”

The smile, as forced as it was, faded from his face. He looked upset and guilty, but you had no idea why that would be. He just looked so familiar, but he replied quietly,

“No, baby, you don’t know me.”

With that, he waved you on. You studied him a moment more, sure you’d seen him somewhere else, but finally felt awkward enough that you continued to the Bar. You opened the door and walked inside, immediately greeted by a four-armed bouncer who asked your age. Telling him you were here for an interview, he looked you over and directed you to the management.

“We are looking for a new bartender!” you were told. “Rick c-137 put in a good word for you!”

“Rick . . .?” you whispered, mostly to yourself. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” you were assured. “He doesn’t come here very often. We get lots of other . . . guests, though.”

The staff who were standing around snickered at that, but you figured that since this was a watering hole for all sorts of aliens, it didn’t mean much. 

“With that recommendation, and if you want the job, it’s yours.”

There was a niggling in the back of your mind about this “Rick c-137”, like there was something just out of memory’s reach, but that was neither here nor there at the moment. You warmed to this. You needed a job, and you knew you could bartend, so why not someplace like this?

“I’m Yvonne,” you said, smiling and offering a hand to shake. “People call me You.”

That was how you got a job at The Bar At the End of the Universe.

_fin._


End file.
